Gold Bullion Uncovers New Prospective Ground On The Cadillac Trend, Two Kilometres East Of The Current Focus Of Its Drilling

By Alastair Ford

“We have 51 holes drilled, and we don’t’ have an assay”. It’s a common complaint at the moment in Canada, as work at the assay labs starts to back up in a way that’s reminiscent of how the bottlenecks built up at the height of the boom that ended with the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. In this particular case the lament belongs to Roger Thomas of Gold Bullion Development Corporation, and he’s right to draw attention to the fact, as Gold Bullion’s shares have been drifting in the last couple of weeks, after they hit an all-time high of C
.71 at the end of June. The gold price has been weaker over the past couple of weeks too, of course, but it seems at least possible that if the company had been able to put some decent results out into market the upward momentum might have continued, that all-time high might have been booked higher, and the subsequent consolidation back to slightly shy of C
.50 slightly less severe.

All told, though, the company has had a good run. It’s been a year of positive newsflow at a time of strong gold prices, and neither Roger, nor Gold Bullion chief executive Frank Basa, have been shy in getting out into the market to tell the story. Frank gave an assured presentation at our 69th Minesite forum on 22nd June, and if the response from our audience was less than forthcoming, that may only have been because their minds were on the budget speech from the UK chancellor George Osborne, which ran roughly at the same time as Frank’s presentation. Because while Frank was earnestly presenting them with the possibility of getting richer, Mr Osborne was returning that serve with the certainty that they would get poorer. Tough crowd.

The message went home, though. Gold Bullion Development Corporation is a company with an extremely exciting development project on the exploration ground that it holds on the prolific Cadillac Trend, around the formerly producing Granada gold mine in Northern Quebec. In May, Gold Bullion set the drill rigs going on a new 20,000 metre campaign designed to increase the 1,100 metre strike length that’s already been established on the LONG Bars zone of the Granada property. In conjunction with the results from previous drilling, the completion of the current campaign should enable the company to complete a maiden 43-101 compliant resource on Granada by the year end. Previous, non-compliant estimates have placed an early stage resource number of over two million ounces on the Granada project, but Frank’s too canny to get into that game.

On a recent radio interview - available on the “Investors” section of the company’s website - he’s keen to emphasise instead that the LONG Bars zone is still open in all directions, and that the current phase is going out east, is going deeper, and would be going at an even greater rate if the company could only get hold of a third rig to add to the two that are already at work there. What’s more, according to Roger Thomas, there’s some comfort to be drawn for those who are getting impatient for the assay results in that gold is frequently visible in the core that’s coming up out of the ground.

Recently, though, the upside in Gold Bullion Development Corporation took on a whole new dimension. On a recent drive out to the east of Gold Bullion’s landholding, Frank literally found a mine. An old shaft about two kilometres away from the current area of focus marks the site of some fairly serious old workings, dating back to the 1920s, or thereabouts. Neither Frank, nor the original vendor of the Granada ground, had had any idea that it was there, but now that it’s been uncovered it looks significant. The indications are that a fairly hefty bulk sample was done back in the day, and Frank himself reckons there are five veins there. Then, a little further on, Frank found another old set of workings.

At this stage it’s hard to draw any substantial conclusions from the identification of new (or rediscovery of old) mineralised zones, but Frank will at least say cautiously that: “It’s not unheard of on the Cadillac trend to have structures that run for kilometres”. The Cadillac trend has, in the past, yielded up several multi-million ounce deposits. It’s a little early to say whether it’s likely to do so again in the vicinity of Granada, especially given the hold ups with the assays. But it’s interesting to speculate just exactly which way the minds of the directors in Gold Bullion might be running now, and what they’d say, were the Canadian market regulations not quite so strict.